Video & Audio via Firewire STB Success or So!

[leatherneck]

I’ve been enjoying GBPVR for sometime now. Recently, I’ve been forced by my cable provider to acquire Moto DCH3200 tuner, bummer for loyal customers, they are no longer sending clear QAM except for 6 local channels. What I’m trying to do is use firewire with STB for video and audio. I have been successful using CapDVHS with Tim Moore’s package and VLC. So I know the connection works. My question is can I also use GBPVR with this firewire connect! If so how! Currently, using component connection between GBPVR via STB.

[pBS]

check the wiki for graph recorder plugin...he made specially to record from firewire...
[an offshoot of software encoding wdm recorder]
since the video isn't compressed and no cards have hardware encoders on firewire, you have to use a software mpeg encoder...[hence the plugin and no native support]

you should get great rec. quality on it, tho tv watching may not be as zippy changin channels..firewire sends perfect video out digitally, so it compresses well..

[leatherneck]

pBS

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I've been looking into it, but the graphedit seems quirky to me. I can view it through VLC, not working in GBPVR. I need to learn more about graph plugin. I don't quite understand the different tabs graph A vs graph B and graph C!

[zehd]

Thought I'd add to this thread...

So I'm finally going to try and firewire into my STBs. I have seen a lot fo stuff on the net indicating you need STB specific drivers - and there's a software from 'Tim Moore' and such.

I'm wondering whether I need to worry about that. Does anything seek or reaed the capabilities of a connected firewire device and just work.

And as far as encryption, how do people get around that?

[mikeh49]

Nothing just works, we all know that or we wouldn't be here!

I have firewire capture working pretty well on lower end hardware with a Motorola DCT6412 STB. I haven't found anything encrypted yet. Only the digital channels are available on the firewire port for me, i.e., not the analog channels that the PVR150 can tune. So I need two capture sources, with two guides and the channels assigned appropriately.

Key points:

Get the timmmoore firewire package (includes drivers, channel changer and capture program) and supplement it with ex_deus' updated inf file for better identification of your STB. Good stuff here: http://home.comcast.net/~exdeus/stbfirewire/ Piece of cake install for me.

Check it out with capdvhs to make sure your connection is working. You will get a .ts file that probably can be played with WMP, VLC or GBPVR. At the least it can be rendered in graphedit.

I use the PVR150 blaster to change channels, more reliable for me than firewire channel changing under Graphrecorder.

Use graphedit to create a capture graph: Firewire capture device -> Nvidia TS info parser -> GBPVR file writer [with .ts file exension] (I don't know what the TS info parser does or if it's needed for capture; graphedit uses it when asked to render a TS file.)

Install the Graphrecorder plugin. Configure as a capture source using the graph above as one or all of the recording qualities. I haven't been able to get preview and time shifting working reliably. All I really need is recording. Also set up the channel changer.

GBPVR 1.3.7 with sub's TS reader patch seems to play these TS captures just fine (based on very limited experience). Or you can play with transcoding, of course.

With my hardware, I had use FSE to play HD, but it looks very good (95% of TV quality). Of course, there are the usual FSE issues, but they are manageable.

Have fun!

[zehd]

Nothing just works, we all know that or we wouldn't be here!

I have firewire capture working pretty well on lower end hardware with a Motorola DCT6412 STB. I haven't found anything encrypted yet. Only the digital channels are available on the firewire port for me, i.e., not the analog channels that the PVR150 can tune. So I need two capture sources, with two guides and the channels assigned appropriately.

Key points:

Get the timmmoore firewire package (includes drivers, channel changer and capture program) and supplement it with ex_deus' updated inf file for better identification of your STB. Good stuff here: http://home.comcast.net/~exdeus/stbfirewire/ Piece of cake install for me.

Check it out with capdvhs to make sure your connection is working. You will get a .ts file that probably can be played with WMP, VLC or GBPVR. At the least it can be rendered in graphedit.

I use the PVR150 blaster to change channels, more reliable for me than firewire channel changing under Graphrecorder.

Use graphedit to create a capture graph: Firewire capture device -> Nvidia TS info parser -> GBPVR file writer [with .ts file exension] (I don't know what the TS info parser does or if it's needed for capture; graphedit uses it when asked to render a TS file.)

Install the Graphrecorder plugin. Configure as a capture source using the graph above as one or all of the recording qualities. I haven't been able to get preview and time shifting working reliably. All I really need is recording. Also set up the channel changer.

GBPVR 1.3.7 with sub's TS reader patch seems to play these TS captures just fine (based on very limited experience). Or you can play with transcoding, of course.

With my hardware, I had use FSE to play HD, but it looks very good (95% of TV quality). Of course, there are the usual FSE issues, but they are manageable.

Have fun!

I'm seeing a few other pages and posts (from other forums) with something like this. Thanks for the GB-PVR specific point of view...

Apparently, firewire channel changing is supposed to be much more reliable, so I'll want to hammer that one out.

Also, I'd like to see if it's easy to change the output to a regular sized MPG... without the need for transcoding...

---

I'm really looking forward to this project. I really want to write some pages that address many of the 'new' tricks that an old dog might have to learn

[mikeh49]

I initially used firewire channel changing when I had the PVR150 s-video input conected to the STB. Within GBPVR, it seemed to work fine. When I used the same channelw.exe in Graphrecorder, it had trouble with one channel in particular, 780, one of the local HDs, therefore pretty important for recording. Since I was occupied getting graphs to work, I just went back to the IR blaster, it has worked flawlessly. I may have "tuned" the firewire changer in GBPVR, unfortunately I don't recall what I did.

You can capture in mpg, but it's more complicated. You need something like: FW capture -> demux -> mux -> file writer. There is a sample graph like this in the Graphrecorder package. I found the ATI mux was the only one to produce reliable files. The files are indeed big. I have generally only recorded HD, so don't have a handle on SD file sizes.